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For Aditya-L1, 2026 is expected to be truly unique.

This marks the initial occasion the spacecraft – that entered into space last year – can observe the Sun during the peak of its solar cycle.

As per scientific data, this occurs roughly every 11 years as the Sun's polarity reverses – a similar Earth scenario would be the planet's poles swapping positions.

This period marked by intense activity. It involves our star transition from peaceful to violent and features a significant rise in the number of solar storms and coronal mass ejections (CMEs) – enormous clouds of plasma that erupt of the Sun's outermost layer.

Made up of ionized particles, a CME may have a mass up to a trillion kilograms and can attain a speed of up to 3,000km per second. It can travel toward various directions, even toward our planet. At maximum velocity, the journey takes a CME about half a day to cover the 150 million km Earth-Sun distance.

"In the normal or low-activity times, the Sun launches two to three CMEs daily," says a leading scientist. "Next year, it's anticipated them to be 10 or more daily."

Researching CMEs ranks among the key scientific objectives for the Indian maiden solar mission. One, as these eruptions offer a chance to learn about the star in the center of our planetary system, and two, because activities that take place on the solar surface endanger infrastructure on our planet and in space.

Impacts on Earth and Orbital Systems

CMEs rarely pose immediate danger to people, yet they impact our planet by causing geomagnetic storms affecting conditions in Earth's vicinity, where about 11,000 satellites, comprising Indian satellites, are stationed.

"The most spectacular displays of a CME include northern lights, which are direct evidence that solar particles from Sun are travelling to Earth," the expert explains.

"However, they may make all the electronics aboard spacecraft fail, disable power grids and disrupt meteorological and telecom spacecraft."

Past Solar Events

• The strongest solar storm in history was the 1859 solar superstorm which knocked out communication systems worldwide
• During 1989, sections of Quebec's power grid failed, leaving six million people in darkness for nine hours
• During late 2015, solar activity disrupted flight operations, leading to chaos in Sweden and various European airports
• In February 2022, an ejection had led to 38 commercial satellites being lost

With capability to observe what happens on the Sun's corona and spot solar activity or solar eruption in real time, measure its heat at the source and watch its trajectory, it can work as advanced warning to shut down power grids and satellites and move them out of harm's way.

The Mission's Unique Advantage

While other space observatories observing the Sun, Aditya-L1 has an advantage over others when it comes to studying the solar atmosphere.

"Aditya-L1's coronagraph has perfect dimensions that lets it effectively simulate lunar coverage, completely blocking the solar disk and allowing it an uninterrupted view of almost all of the corona around the clock, 365 days a year, including during eclipses and occultations," notes the expert.

Essentially, the coronagraph acts like an artificial Moon, blocking the solar glare allowing researchers continuously observe the dim solar atmosphere – something natural eclipses provide only during eclipses.

Additionally, it's unique capable of examining eruptions in visible light, enabling it to measure eruption heat and heat energy – key clues that show how strong of an eruption if it headed toward Earth.

Preparation for Peak Period

In preparation for next year's peak solar activity period, scientists collaborated to study information gathered from one of the largest CMEs recorded by the mission has observed recently.

This event began in September 2024 at 00:30 GMT. Its mass was 270 million tonnes – the iceberg that struck the ship was 1.5 million tonnes.

At origin, its temperature reached extreme levels and the energy content was equivalent to millions of tons of explosives – in comparison the atomic bombs used in Japan were 15 kilotons in scale respectively.

Even though the numbers seem massive, the scientist describes it as a "medium-sized" one.

The space rock that eliminated the dinosaurs on Earth was 100 million megatons and when the Sun's maximum activity cycle, there may be eruptions carrying power matching even more than that.

"In my view the CME we evaluated to have occurred when the Sun was in the normal activity phase. Now this sets the benchmark for future comparison assessing what to expect during solar maximum arrives," he states.

"The learnings gained will assist in work out the countermeasures to implement to protect spacecraft in near space. They will also help us gain a better understanding of near-Earth space," he adds.